City Council - Regular Meeting

Happy. Hey. Hey. Recording in progress. Okay. Testing. Okay. [snorts] Okay. Uh, good evening everybody. Um, welcome to the Hayward City Council meeting. It is April 7th.

Okay. Okay. Uh, good evening everybody. Um, welcome to the Hayward City Council meeting. It is April 7th. Okay. Am I good now? Okay. Um, good evening everyone. Today is April 7th, 2026. Uh, it is 7:02 p.m. like to call this meeting to order and if I could ask uh, Council Member Roach if she can please do the Pledge of Allegiance.

Yes, thank you. Please stand if you're able. Thank you. And madam city clerk, will you please take role? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council member Andrews, present. Council member Vonia Jr. present. Council member Goldstein, present. Council member Roach, present. Council member Sarro, present. Council member Sermano, Mayor Selenus,

present. Thank you. Uh, next, if I could uh call upon our city attorney if you can give us a close session announcement. Thank you, Mayor and Council. There was a close session at 5:30 with Council Member Andrews um absent. The council conferred with uh its uh labor negotiators to discuss uh labor negotiations with all bargaining groups. There's no reportable action and the close session adjourned at 644.

Thank you. Um today we have uh two special presentations. Uh our first special presentation is for the national public safety telecommunication telecommunicators week. Uh and our second presentation is to acknowledge uh our national or acknowledge national arbor which is on April 24th, 2026. And uh what I'm going to do is I'm going to um start off with the National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week proclamation. Um here with us this evening we have our police chief uh Chief Brian Matthews. And I don't see Mr. Ster here. Uh so uh Chief Matthews uh if you could uh come on up and I will read the proclamation. And then uh after we read the proclamation, we'll go down, you know, we'll take a picture and uh and then we'll uh and you know, you'll uh give us a a 20 minute lecture on uh telecommunicators. Okay. Uh okay. Proclamation. Whereas emergencies can occur at any time that require police, fire or emergency medical services. And whereas when an emergency occurs, the prominent response of police officers, firefighters, and paramedics is critical to the protection of life and the preservation of property. And whereas the safety of our police officers and firefighters is dependent upon the quality of accuracy of information obtained from citizens whose telephone uh who telephone the Herod Police Department 911 communication center. And whereas public safety telecommunicators are the first and most critical contact

our citizens have with emergency services. Whereas public safety telecommunicators are the single vital link for our police officers and firefighters by monitoring their activities by radio, providing them information and ensuring their safety. And whereas the members of the Hayward Police Department 911 communication center have contributed substantially to the apprehension of criminals, suppression of fire, and treatment of patients. And whereas each dispatcher has exhibited compassion, understanding, and professionalism during the performance of their jobs. And whereas the city of Hayward owes a debt of gratitude to the dedicated men and women of the Hayward Police Department 911 communication center who dedicate their lives to answering who dedicate their lives to answering calls during times of intense personal crisis and communitywide disasters. who are the first and single point of contact for persons seeking relief during emergency. Now therefore, I, Mark Senas, mayor of the city of Hayward, do hereby proclaim the week of April 12th to the 18th, 2026 as National Public Safety Telecom tele Telecommunicators Week, [cough] [snorts] excuse me. And so uh so let's give our uh men and women in the telecommunication center a big round of applause and dispatch. [applause] And I did see uh Mr. Straer sneak in. So um and then uh let's go down and take a picture.

All

[clears throat]

right, you're not getting 20 minutes, but um I I do want to take a moment uh mayor and council to say thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to recognize truly an incredible group of human beings who do a very very very difficult job. Um, these are the calm, collected voices behind the 911 calls when members of our community are having their worst day. Um, not only do they show empathy and uh, effectiveness in gathering information, but they have to maintain situational awareness and they're responsible for sending police officers, firefighters, and medical staff uh, to help. And so, um, they are the first point of contact. They are the first first responders. Uh, and they do an incredible job. We are we are very very lucky to have such talent in that dispatch center like Mr. James Derer who's here on behalf of the of the comp center. Um so thank you again for the recognition. Uh and I just want to give a shout out to our staff. They do an incredible job. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] And uh when you do talk to them, please uh tell them thank you on behalf of the city and the council. Thank you.

Yeah. Uh, Council Member Andrews.

Yes. I just wanted to thank public safety for their responsiveness to our residents in greatest need and also look forward to the county helping us support our residents and visitors in in great need. So, we will continue to advocate to the county and the state to support us as we continue to respond to issues that we're seeing across the country happening in our city. So, we look forward to continuing to partner with our representatives. Thank you. Thank you. Um, our next proclamation, I'm sorry. Our next proclamation is National Arbor Day. [snorts] And I uh and we have with us uh Richard Ne, our landscape maintenance manager. And Mr. Ne Oh,

Mr. Roman, the director of maintenance services. Welcome, sir. Okay. National Arbor Day. Whereas in 1872, J. Sterling Morton proposed to the NA Nebraska Board of Agriculture that a special day be set aside for the planting of trees. And whereas this holiday called Arbor Day was first observed with the planting of of with the planting of more than a million trees in Nebraska. And Arbor Day is now observed throughout the nation. and the world. And whereas trees in our city increase property values, enhance the economic vitality of business areas, provide environmental benefits, and beautify our community. They are a source of joy and spiritual renewal. Whereas the city of Hayward, the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District, and the Hayward Unified School District are promoting Arbor Day so that we can reflect upon the ways trees benefit our community and encourage all residents to join in celebrating by planting a tree of their own. And whereas the city of Hayward uh has been recognized as a Tree City USA for 38 consecutive years by the National Arbor Day Foundation and Des um and desires to continue its tree planting practices. And whereas this year's City of Hayward Arbor Day celebration is taking place at Treeview Elementary School on April 28, 2026. Now therefore, I, Mark Lenus, mayor of the city. Hey, we do hereby proclaim April 24th, 2026 National Arbor Day. Let's give our trees a big round of applause. [applause]

And and just so that you know, uh this past weekend I planted three um I guess they're like rose trees in my backyard. I'll be coming by to inspect them. Make sure they're healthy. Yes, absolutely. Council members are many. Uh, as I've been doing for the last 15 years, on the 20th of April, I'll be planting the 15th fruit tree at Chabel College. Something that they really uh admire over there. And I thank the uh Todd who is always finds me a tree to plant. So, uh, it's a good partnership between Shabbo and the city of Hayward. So, yes, go out and plant a tree. Thank you. Thank you. Um, okay. Um, I'm moving on to our public comments. Uh, I have one public comment card here with me and I have I don't see anybody online, but I do have one public comment card. Um, Mr. Sullivan, Sean Sullivan.

Thank you. Can see I'm not here often. Uh I wanted to just come and thank you uh and bring you some good news. I know electeds don't always get a lot of good news. So, I just wanted to share with you that after a very long time, uh, Covenant House, California will be having its grand opening on Saturday, April 18th at 11:00 a.m. Uh, I know, uh, mayor, you mentioned that in your state of the city earlier uh, this year, and we appreciate that. Uh, we just wanted to invite the entire community to come uh, to celebrate to let uh, to celebrate these young people who are uh, exiting homelessness and making their way on a path to self-sufficiency. So that again will be at uh 27211 Tyrell Avenue uh right behind the YMCA uh and former elementary school there. We will serve 30 young people uh exiting homelessness and also serve as Alama County uh point of entry to the social service system for young people exiting homelessness. Uh we want to thank everybody here for your support uh the council uh city manager uh for her support in this effort and especially to uh council member Andrews who's been out there pulling weeds with us when uh where was weeds overgrowing because this project took too long and uh helping us celebrate and lift up all the volunteer opportunities that we have there and will have there uh for people again. So we would just want to thank you all again. If you have good news, you can have another 20 minutes if you want. Thank you. And uh and thank you for your work out there. It's a a major major program that we're doing out there. And it's also a great collaboration between the school district, the city, and Covenant, California. So, thank you very much. Okay. Um I don't see anyone online, so let me go back. [snorts]

Okay. I'm like to close public comments and I'll move on to uh city manager comments.

Great. Thank you, Mayor Council. Um construction is now underway on La Vista Park with anticipated completion by fall 2027. a joint project of the city of Hayward and the Hayward area recreation and park district. La Vista Park is a new 39 acre hillside recreation area coming to South Hayward. We anticipate it will be a destination for the entire city and beyond. It's located above Mission Boulevard at Tennyson Road at the site of the old Le Vista Quarry. The new park will have 180 degree plus views of San Francisco Bay with a ridge trail, sports fields, courts and amphitheater, yoga lawn, and much more. Um the project is being funded with hard voter approved measure F1 bond proceeds and inloo fees paid to the city by developers um including a contribution by the quarry owner to Silva Gates of Dublin builder of 179 home subdivision next to the quarry. Um next Tuesday, April 14th at 4M the city and heart are planning a ceremonial groundbreaking event to celebrate the project and the progress. And if you want to learn more, you can go to Hayward our website at uh content frontcontent Vista la um-Vista-park. Sorry about that. Um we also the economic development team in partnership with the Alama County Workforce Development Board is co-hosting the apprenticeship pathways employer and educator forum on Thursday, April 23rd at Hayward City Hall. The event will bring together employers, educators, and workforce partners to highlight the value of apprenticeship programs and building strong local talent pipelines and meeting hiring needs. The event is free and business and educators interested in attending can email the economic development team for registration information at economic development at hayward-ca.gov. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay. Uh next, um moving on to our consent calendar and nobody has asked to pull. Oh, um we got one. Uh is it just a short? Okay, it's a question, I guess. Uh okay. Um what number is it? Three. Yeah. No, I guess I thought it was. Okay. Which is the first. Okay. Yeah. Um Okay. So, I'll do this. Let's um ask a question.

Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to ask this is the consent item where we're giving authorization to accept up to 350,000 in um grants should they come. And I just wanted to ask yeah maybe the library director could come up because you know obviously the library is missing a lot of state funds this year. And so I wanted to ask that we have not received $350,000. We're just giving authorization. Yes. Thank you, council member. Yes, we have not received $350,000. We do receive well over $200,000 a year. And so we haven't we didn't not receive money this year. We are concerned about the coming year. Okay.

And so that's what we're concerned about, but we do get at least $250,000 pretty much regularly from the state. Okay. And and the reason I wanted to ask is, you know, there are a lot of programs that are going away because um different funding, federal funding and state funding. And so I just wanted to ask like what significant funding did we miss this year that didn't allow us to I mean I know HPN was one of them but um

yeah so HPN is a federal grant and it's separate but again the state library we got all our grants this year the coming year the state has said they don't want to invest in English as a second language ESL we get significant money for that and that is also one of our really large impact programs so we impact about 300 people in the city through through our ESL programs. And that's the early literacy work as well. Is that right? The early literacy, we have a families for literacy program which is separate and but we don't get very much money. ESL is the big one that we're concerned about and that is a very significant part of our program.

And that was that one what was that about 150,000? Is that right? Is that that one? That's about let me see we got it's it's about 130,000 annually. Yeah. Okay. And is there a possibility that will come or is it's already been decided we're not going to get this? I think there is still some talk going on, you know, that we're still trying to um we're working with our lobbyists from through the California Library Association, working with different uh uh legislators to try to see if we can influence that. Okay. Yeah. Because there is a May revise, you know, final final revise. We hope it'll get Thank you. Yeah. I just wanted us to make sure that we didn't get this money that we're hoping to get some of it in the future. So, okay. Thank you for explaining that. And that was all I had. Mayor, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Um, and so before I ask for a motion, I'll I have a brief comment, too. I don't know if you uh did I show up on your iPad? I just want to make sure I'm uh I wasn't even paying. It's okay. Just trying to uh No, you go ahead.

All right. Thank you. Just wanted to comment on number nine, which is the adoption of of the uh local speed management plan. I was also wondering if I could invite uh Byron up just to say a few words on it. Uh, I know that there's been some high-profile fatalities. We had a work session recently on how the city is trying to approach street safety. Um, not trying to retread, you know, that past discussion, but maybe can you speak to how this management plan is addressing some of the, uh, topics that have come up over the past month and what this plan hopes to accomplish?

Yeah, council member. Um when it comes to reducing and um getting our fatalities and severe injuries to zero, um speed is a major factor in determining um the severity of the injuries and collisions. So this plan outlines a strategy that we can use to reduce speeds um overall throughout the city in the long term. um this is going to support a lot of our projects and provides toolbox guidance and other ways how we can apply these speed management strategies to what we do.

Great. Thank you for that. And I just wanted to thank the mayor and council member Andrews for their work alongside me on the uh infrastructure and airport committee. I think there's a there's a PDF attachment to this that really condenses a lot of uh uh to me, you know, cutting edge thinking around traffic management, street safety. I just commend you and the public works team that have been working to not only think these ideas through but also implement them across the city. Uh and so I'm really excited to see this moving forward and I think uh it really demonstrates a strong leadership to improve the quality of uh streets for all modes of transportation and ages. Uh so I just thank you for your work. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Um, so what I'll do is I'll open up for I'll move to um uh to public comment and uh let's see. I don't have any cards and I don't see anyone online. So I will come back. [sighs] I pressed motion. I don't know if it

Yeah. Yeah. I'm uh let me refresh u I did see that. So, um, moved by, uh, Coun Mayor Pro Tim Cyrup, seconded by, uh, Council Member Goldstein, and, um, Madame City Clerk, we can vote. And it looks like it unanimously passes. Thank you. Okay. Uh moving on to our we have two work session items. Uh item number 12 is uh adopt a resolution. No, I'm sorry. Um item number 13, uh which is the work session on the potential ballot measure to modernize the city of Hayward's business license tax ordinance. And uh this is going to come to us by way of our city manager uh Miss Aut. But I I also see Miss Perez sitting over there and I see Miss Thomas. So apparently uh there's [snorts] some serious things going to be said.

Serious. And I'm a small part of that. So I'm going to turn it over to Miss Perez who's going to go ahead and give the presentation. Then I'll wrap it up at the end.

Thank you. No pressure. Right. [laughter] Good evening, Mayor and Council. Today we're here to continue the discussion from our February 28th work session about our business license tax modernization. Um tonight we're going to briefly recap that work session, share the updated proposal details, and we're going to walk through business and voter feedback. At the February work session, we introduced the need to modernize Hayward's BLT structure. And just to clarify, when I say BLT tonight, I'm going to be referring to business license tax, not the sandwich, unfortunately. So, at that work session, we presented you with two proposals. One of them was a match neighbors scenario, and the other one was a 7x uh revenuebased scenario, and we discussed some elements like a gross receipt structure, a payroll tax, and a minimum tax. So, at that meeting, council expressed interest in exploring the match neighbors approach that aligns Hayward more closely with the surrounding cities and maximizes revenue potential. Council also expressed interest in adding additional gross receipts bracket and ultimately gave us direction to conduct public opinion polling and business engagement before coming back with a refined proposal, which is what we did and what we're here to uh discuss. So, first I'm going to be kicking it off to Matt Newman from Blue Sky Consulting. You met him at the February work session. He's going to be discussing what that updated tax structure looks like. And then we're going to be going into detail on our polling and our um survey results. So, Matt, are you online?

There he is. We are you mute? Can't hear you. Matt, do you want to talk? We can see you. Matt, can you see hear us? Oh, you're We cannot hear you, unfortunately. This keeps going back and forth. Are you able to Miriam? Do you know Matt, are you able to unmute your I'm here and I'm not muted. Oh, there you go. [laughter]

Okay, can you guys hear me now? Yes. Okay, great. Louder. Anyway, [clears throat] good evening everybody and uh thank you for the chance to talk to you about the revised proposal. Um the proposal isn't in many ways quite similar to the one that you all looked at at the prior work session. Um it's changed a little bit to raise a bit more money about 2 million extra Matt can you hold on. Good evening [clears throat] everybody and uh

okay go ahead. Oops. Excuse me. Yes. Could could you please um try again? Mr. Newman, could you Yes. Can you all hear me? Yes. Yes. Please go ahead.

Okay. Um, so, uh, the proposal that we're we're sharing with you tonight is in many ways quite similar to the match neighbors proposal that you, uh, spent some time looking at at your prior work session. [snorts] Um, we adjusted a few of the rate categories to, uh, try to raise a little bit more money, about $2 million more than the prior proposal. Um at the suggestion of uh a council member at the meeting, we we also broke up the middle bracket which went from 5 million to 25 million which of course encompasses a lot of businesses uh to try to make it a bit more fine grain. So now there's there's uh an extra bracket in there 5 to 10 and 10 to 25. So we have four total brackets. Um and the other structures are the same. a minimum tax of $60 and a a payroll tax uh alternative for businesses that don't generate gross receipts. Um so this is what the proposal looks like. This display is quite similar to the one uh we shared before. You can see we're anticipating uh it'll generate about $14.4 million. Um the biggest changes in the rate categories um are uh mostly with respect to the addition of the extra bracket of course which raises a little bit of extra money. Uh we adjusted the utility companies rates a bit um and also the commercial and residential uh property rates a bit as well. Um the thinking there was that the real estate in Hayward is one thing which can't leave and we wanted to make sure that we didn't raise rates so high that other businesses were tempted to try to relocate outside of the city. Um so that's what this uh structure looks like. If we go to the next slide, you can see a different comparison. So what this shows is for some example businesses. Uh the yellow band shows what what these businesses would pay under current law. The green is what uh we discussed at the prior work session

and the blue is what uh the current proposal would consist of and then below that you can see uh what the the um a business uh located in one of the neighboring cities would collect. So for example, large retail currently would pay about $108,000 a year. Under the old match neighbors it would be be 197,000. and we raised that just a little bit um to get to about $236,000 for a large uh retailer with about 400 million in revenue. You can see that uh puts the city uh a bit above some of the close-in neighbors uh less than Emeryville, less than Berkeley, less than Oakland. Um I won't go through all of these, but I'm certainly happy to answer any questions um about uh how this compares to what the neighboring cities are charging or or the old proposal. So maybe it's a a good time to pause and see if there's questions.

So are so hold on a second. Are we gonna go slide by slide and ask questions or I can wait till the end of Yeah, let's wait till the end. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you, Matt. Now shifting to what we heard directly from the business community. We conducted a business engagement survey to ensure their perspectives were reflected in this process. And I'm going to walk through a summary of the key themes that we heard from the businesses. So first off, um a total of 154 businesses participated in this survey, which we felt was a strong response. The majority of them were small businesses and businesses that are well established with uh 68 or sorry 85% of them having operated in Hayward for over four years and 30% operating for over 20 years. And we also heard from a mix of industries, the largest being the business and professional services community, which involves like your chiropractic offices, accounting, um, and tax offices, and the retail, sales, and restaurants category. When we asked businesses whether or not they agreed that our BLT structure should be updated to reflect today's business environment, the responses were fairly mixed. At the same time, even though the businesses did show support to modernize, they expressed concerns about rising cost, cumulative impact of added taxes. So cost sensitivity was definitely a theme here regardless of position. And when we asked um how sensitive businesses would be to increases in the BLT, over 75% of the respondents reported moderate to extreme sensitivity to the increases. And some of the common responses that we saw were regarding inflation, increases to labor and rent, and indication that any additional tax would be felt alongside the existing financial pressures of having a business. Lastly, we took the opportunity to ask businesses about their experience with the business license application process and renewal process. And the good news

here is that over 60% reported a positive experience, rating it easy or very easy process. And many respondents highlighted that the online system is easy to use and that the process is generally efficient. Um there were some notes about opportunities for improvement with response times which is useful feedback for our internal operations. So in addition to hearing from our business community, we also conducted a round of public opinion research to see where the community stands. And for that piece, we did work with our public opinion research consultant FM3. So I'd like to introduce Miranda Everett, who's also online, and she's going to walk us through those findings. Miranda, are you online?

I am. Can you hear me? Yep.

Okay, great. Um, so my name is Miranda Everett. I'm a partner at FM3 Research. We're a public opinion research and strategy firm based in the Bay Area. Um, and have done lots of research with Hayward over many years on finance measures and community surveys. So, we we know our community here quite well. Um so I'm here to present results of a recent survey conducted on uh voter views of a business license tax modernization measure. Uh the next slide digs into our survey methodology here. This was done using our sort of typical approach these days which is a mixture of landline, cell phone, email and text invitation uh to the survey. Kind of reaching people as many ways as we possibly can. Uh we have 625 interviews represented here. That's a quite a robust number for a city of your size. Often my statewide surveys are 600 to 800 voters. Um that gives us a margin of error of 4% for the full sample and about 6% for half sample questions. And you will see some tracking data going back all the way to 2008 when we first started working with the city. Um so the next few slides show some contextual questions we took the opportunity to ask since we were speaking to voters. Uh the first is whether things in Hayward are headed in the right direction or whether they are off on the wrong track. Um in blue you can see 45% believe things are headed in the right direction. So that's most voters. 36% believe things are headed off on the wrong track and 20% say they don't know or are mixed. That is a slight improvement over the last time we asked about it back in 2024 when 40% said things were headed in the right direction. On the next slide, you can see we also ask people whether they're satisfied with the overall quality of life in Hayward. And that very top bar there shows the current results where 73% say they are very or somewhat satisfied with their quality of life in Hayward. Just

26% say they are not satisfied currently. Um that's down a little bit from a high point last year in 2025 when 80% said they were satisfied. um but higher than it had been in 2021 when 68% said they were satisfied. So generally fairly high numbers uh although a little bit of a a slide from 2025. The next slide shows uh satisfaction levels for something more specific which is how the city is doing providing resident services. 60% say they're satisfied with the job the city is doing to provide resident services. 31% dissatisfied. Um that again is a slight uh drawback from 2025 when 69% were satisfied and 23% were dissatisfied. Uh but an improvement when you compare it to 2021 when 56% were satisfied. So again very similar pattern for a slightly different question. The next question we asked, and this is one that we had asked back in 2024 when we were looking at a different finance measure for the city, was whether people see a need for additional funding um to maintain essential city services and facilities. Uh and you can see quite a need here. 75% see a great or some need for additional funding for these uh services and facilities. 40% see a great need at the higher end of the scale. Um and this is pretty comparable to 2024. So the next few slides uh walk through our uh approach to asking about the business license tax modernization ballot measure. The first thing we did um very early on in the survey is give people the 75word hypothetical ballot measure language. It's kind of a run-on sentence but and includes lots of uh legal details and financial details but it is close to what's required by law to be on the ballot. Knowing that that one piece of information, how people react

to what they might see before they check yes or no is kind of the most important piece of information that we can get. What's their their sort of initial impression of what they see? And you can see the language everyone heard or read on that slide. Thank you. And the results of that are fairly positive. 59% say they would vote yes on the measure. Uh 29% said they would definitely vote yes. 33% are leaning at least toward a no vote or definitely no or probably no. And then just 8% are undecided. So this is a good place to start. Uh you're looking at a measure that needs a simple majority for approval. And you have that along with a little bit of cushion considering our margin of error. But what's notable here is that about half of your supporters here, 30% are just a probably or or leaning toward a yes vote. So, there's some indication here that there's a little more information that's needed uh to really bring up that that yes vote number and get people more sure of uh of their decision. So, to help with that, we gave people just three short paragraphs explaining the current status quo with business license taxes in the city, how this compares to other areas, uh and then a little bit more about the different rate structures, how much it would generate, what it would pay for, and a bit of the accountability piece. So very kind of neutral information just um not you know leaning on the the scales too much just saying kind of what we're doing here what we're changing and what impact that might have on the city. The next slide shows the impact of that information which was quite um significant. There you can see we moved from 59% yes to 68% yes with that information and our definitely yes share jumped 10 points from 29% definitely yes to 39% definitely yes so in a much stronger position. Um so I think this all kind of adds up to a measure that looks viable

uh should you should choose to place it on the ballot. Uh voters see a need for funding in the city. They're generally supportive of the business license tax measure and just a little bit of plain language information is helpful in consolidating that yes vote and happy to take questions at the end.

Great. Thank you Miranda and um Miss Perez. Um I'm here just to talk about what we're looking for tonight. This is a work session item. Our hope is really to come back in May with a final if the direction is to pursue this to come back with kind of final uh ordinance changes and all the all the actions that are necessary to put this on the ballot in November. Um so tonight we would like to invite council to provide any feedback um and final direction so that we can come back in May with kind of a um a final measure. Um, so some of the things we just want to make sure based on the feedback we received in February from council, make sure that council's comfortable with the way that we've addressed the gross receipts base structure, some of the changes we made in response to your comments, um, the progressive rate structure. Is there um, any direction, anything else you'd like to give direction on in terms of the proposed rate structure or bracket? So, we'd like to hear your feedback. Um, and then based on that feedback, assuming the direction is to move forward, we'll take that feedback, make the final changes, and come back in May with that ordinance, that the ordinance changes and all the all the measure, all the info necessary to to put it on the ballot in November. Okay, that's it. Thank you. Um, okay, so let me come back and this is a work session. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to open up for public comment first. I don't have any cards. I did see Let me Okay, I do see a couple of hands. Uh, our first caller is uh Emily Wallace.

Yes. Hello. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, city council members. During your February budget workshop, the city stated that it would reach out to labor partners to discuss this effort to modernize its business license tax. Yet, the city is about to make a critical decision on the updated model, and no one has contacted us. So, we wanted to make sure that you understand our concerns about the proposed match neighbors tax model. If Hayward wants to match its neighbors, then you must look at cities that have successfully updated their business license tax in recent years. Instead, the city is comparing itself to outdated systems that are just as old as Hayward's current model. Cities like San Leandro, who are working to modernize their business tax structure because it hasn't been updated in 15 years. Fremont hasn't had a change to their business tax since 1978. And Pleasanton hasn't changed theirs since 1983. When we look at the surrounding agencies that have modernized their business tax structure recently, the match neighbors scenario doesn't even come close to matching Hayward's neighbors. The model that Hayward has presented falls short. We believe that Hayward needs to go farther with updating the tax rates for industries like professional services, business personal services, and commercial rentals. These categories capture things like data companies, commercial banks, and landlords, which typically have extremely high profits each year, and they should be fairly taxed. And we can't let businesses scare us into inaction. The UC Labor Center found that there are several factors that go into deciding a location for a business, and a tax structure is not the only factor that is considered. Businesses care a lot about a city's ability to deliver highquality services that keep our city safe and clean with stable infrastructure. If the city has no revenue for its services, that's

going to deter businesses from opening up shop and Hayward. We're glad that the city is taking this important opportunity to modernize its business license tax, but it must be done in a way that creates the ongoing structural change that's needed to address Hayward's financial crisis. laying off our workforce, keeping Hayward in a perpetual hiring freeze, demanding that city workers give up their wage increases, closing our library, and gutting Hayward's public services is not sustainable structural change. But this is so on behalf of our members and the communities we serve, we demand that you take real leadership on Hayward's future and design a ballot measure that brings our business tax structure into alignment with our neighboring cities. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Um, our next uh caller is a Zoom user.

Hi, that's me. I'm Suzanne Luther from Hayward Concerned Citizens and I'd like to say bravo, bravo, Emily Wallace. Thank you for your uh comments and I feel like uh these um surveys that FM3 is doing, why don't they just come out and ask the question first? Do you want a four times business tax? They they um ask these little questions that make everything look really good and then they ask the other questions. I I I don't like that. And the the verbiage that you're using uh modernization, sorry, it seems slimy to me when you guys are ch saying that you're totally transparent. I think that you guys really need to uh reook at things and re-evaluate what you guys are doing. Thank you. Thank you. Um, next is uh Derek B or no um uh Ro Aguilar.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I have a few questions about this ballot measure. Number one, uh can the money be used to address homelessness? Uh, can it be used to uh offer services uh match with the county in housing? Uh, is it flexible enough to do that? Does it need to say it in the ballot or is that uh included under core services? And I don't I don't think that we can expect our businesses to thrive if we haven't address this problem of homelessness. Uh so I'd like to know how the city is approaching that with this ballot measure. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next caller is Derek Barnes. Good evening, Mayor. Can you hear me? Yes.

Great. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Derek Barnes, CEO of East Bay Rental Housing Association. Um, EBRA is named uh as a partner uh in the report and we represent uh small rental owner operators throughout the East Bay, including Hayward. Uh we're we support modernizing the BLT. The current structure hasn't changed since 1978 and that's not sustainable as we know, but we have serious concerns about how residential rental is treated uh in this proposal and we're asking council to address them before May. Caution. Um the proposed ordinance taxes all residential rental from duplexes to large apartment complexes at a flat $3 per $1,000 gross receipt. And that's the highest rate uh in the schedule with no graduation for smaller owner operators. Um your own data shows this is um roughly 10-fold increase for four plus unit properties and it takes you know about 4,800 small uh rental property owners from effectively zero to a new gross receipts. Um and we need to take a hard look at that. um these are not institutional investors and I think we you need to be concerned about that. These are small mama pops who have properties largely um from family inheritance or for retirement purposes and they're generally workingclass um people uh that own these properties. um questions you were asking was a graduated or tiered rate for residential rental uh rental uh ever modeled and what is the revenue impact of a lower entrylevel rate uh for small owner operators? council should have uh that analysis before locking in any ballot language. And our recommendation, director staff, is to return in May with

at least one alternative scenario that applies um a reduced rate below 250,000 in gross receipts consistent with how every other business category um this proposal is structured. And I think that just kind of applies a fair uh and standard uh way of kind of looking at exemptions for those small owner operators. Um we have a challenging time I think just in in you know AC across the Bay Area with making sure that our council understands that our our small mom and pops are actually businesses too. um not just any business, they provide a service and many of them um are small owner operators that are reeling from the pressures of high high rising costs like any other business and I think um those small owner operators should have you know some special attention um and exemptions. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Uh I don't have any more callers. Uh, let me come back to council. Uh, council member Andrews, thank you for the presentation. And, um, just had a few questions. Uh, from the survey, did they the the respondents, did they specifically say what they were dissatisfied with? Is there a particular issue that was brought up that reoccurred in in the responses in in terms of the renewal process or I'm sorry which which the FM3 the FM3

okay Miranda are you still on and could you Yes. Uh we did not ask an a follow-up open-ended question about dissatisfaction so we don't have the answer to that question specifically. Okay. Um, and what will we offer with this increase? Is what are what are the things that we're going to promote in order for them to understand that if we were to pass this, this is the things that you're going to see as a result.

Yeah. Well, this [clears throat] is a general tax, so the it could be used on any of the general fund services that we provide. that you see that we highlight. This really is something just for us to be able to provide our public safety services, our um services to eliminate blight, all the the things that we use our general fund money for and predominantly it is for public safety. And so um this would go to help us be able to sustain our public safety services.

Okay. And then I I guess our recommendation is to talk about our uh declining property crime data that was released. Uh we did a a press release not too long ago and maybe that's something you can promote when we do come to the voters regarding that. Um, and then also wanted to know um what so there was a question about homelessness and core services and um how are we prioritizing core services and how does that fit in with this um increase?

Yeah, I mean we do currently use general fund money to support homelessness services and to address homelessness in the city. So that is something at the council's discretion that this these funds could be used for that. We currently do that. I think um that would be at the be part of a proposed budget, part of a council action to approve that. Um but that is something that we have the flexibility to use these funds for. Um, I think given where we are financially, um, I think core services from my standpoint as a city manager would be to focus on, um, public safety, on, you know, providing our making sure we have, um, sufficient, you know, services to eliminate blight, our maintenance services. So, we'd we'd want to focus on those, but we do currently have the flexibility to use these funds for homelessness as well. And can can we just have a quick update on our partnership with the county and how we are trying to work with them on these homelessness services?

Yeah, sure. So, one of the the main ways um well, what in addition to just being part of regional part um bodies that talk about homeless strategies, we um measure W is a funding source that the county is using for this and we are actively participating in grant application right now to um try and acquire some of that money for for the local services here in the Hayward community. Um and so that's that's one of the main ways that we're trying to partner with them.

Okay. And then um also wanted to ask about the point that was raised by IFPTE about um being contacted regarding this this increase um and wanted to see if if we have made contact and if if there's any followup.

Yeah, we invited uh we were very clear. We actually held a couple budget sessions and talked brief talked about the business license tax and the efforts we were making. And then we invited all of our [clears throat] labor groups to attend the council's February work session to join and attend where we h shared information related to this. We invited them that to comment if they wanted or to be participate. It's an open meeting and so we sent those invitations to them. Um and then subsequently at uh additional meetings, we asked if they had any questions about what was raised at that meeting on in Feb on February 28th um and invited any thoughts that they had. Thank you for the clarification. And then also wanted to um uh respond to um the East Bay Regional Housing Association and wanted to see if we can revisit some of the thresholds that he was raising. I don't know if um Matt wants to chime in or do you want me to do you want me to talk a little bit? So we those we did bring this up with the council in February where residential units that are one to three units were exempt or are currently exempt from our current tax.

Um and the stat the recommendation was to include them. You can exclude them. you could make that decision to do that or to change. It looks like one of their things was the tax rates by bracket doesn't change. So, you could give us direction to graduate that tax rate as the um tax rates go up. But I' I'd invite Matt, our consultant, to talk a little bit about it, too, if he has anything else to add. Yeah, we certainly can um set the rates however you want and we could uh share a proposal in the future with more graduated rates as well as the the flat rates that we're showing here. We had a slightly more graduated rate structure which we proposed uh in the match the original match neighbors and we could go back to that. This one just raises a bit more money. Um, one, you know, concern is that you want to make sure that you're treating all the tenants the same, too, and and not necessarily disadvantaging tenants that live in in larger buildings to the extent that the costs are passed on to them. Um, but it's certainly possible to to adjust the rates um to have it be slightly more graduated.

Okay. Thank you for bringing up the point of the tenants because that's something I didn't consider before. So, okay. Thank you. Those are all my questions. Thank you, Council Member Zermeno. Mayor, thank you very much. And uh thank you, Miss Perez and Matt and Miranda

and Miranda. Uh a good report. I'm looking at the staff report uh which is page uh two. Um at the moment we are second from the left. Uh Dublin is to the left and uh Oakland is to the very right. If we were if if the voters were to approve this, it would place us where on this graph and or is it a guesstimate?

Matt, he's referring to the selected various cities uh comparison. Can you uh touch on that one from the staff report, please? We don't want to go to Oakland and we don't want to be as where we are now. I always like to see us in the middle of things.

Yes. Let me just pull the staff report up so I've got it here. Um, if we were to approve the um the revised match neighbors proposal, which we're we're looking at right now, we'd be uh just right around San Jose, maybe a little bit below between Liverour and San Jose. Okay. All right. So, it would would be slightly higher than San Leandro and Union City, which are neighboring cities, Pleasanton. Okay. Yes. Actually, I I apologize. I misspoke. we'd be just slightly above San Jose. San Jose is at about uh 3.82 and I think we'd be just just slightly above that but but very close to that.

But we would not be the highest nor would we be the lowest. All right. Uh that's good. Um uh are we would this program consider any waiverss for folks who may be having a difficult time? Uh a caller spoke about uh you know mom and pop uh renters. Is that something that can be included? Some kind of a waiver, some kind of a something or other along those lines? Yeah, we don't we don't currently have a waiver. I don't um and I don't know, Matt, if you want to talk about if any other cities that you've ever seen include a waiver. Um

does it exist? And you know, I don't know. a current business typically back

that that's a that's a bit unusual. Um I haven't seen it with respect to a business license tax and and one reason is that it requires the the city to determine what constitutes a hardship. So every case has to be evaluated on a case- by case basis and it's difficult to identify in advance um non non-arbitrary criteria which can be relied on. Um, another thing which I think is important to note is that the tax is based on gross receipts. So if you consider for example the case of a landlord, if they had vacancies, for example, the gross receipts would be lower and their tax bill would go down as a result. So um there's sort of a somewhat of a built-in mechanism to have lower taxes when when business revenues go down.

Okay. All right. Okay. I was just wondering about that. Um uh did we forget anything on on the shopping list of the ballot uh message? Did we we included social uh public safety? Um uh I think we included the unhoused. Can can we put that up again? Uh we included potholes. Just wondering if we can include something along the lines of pedestrian and bicycle safety because that is something that we are it's a previous one uh there. Okay. Uh police, firefighting, 91, etc. But I think it would be good to see something along the lines of pedestrian and bicycle safety. Uh we've been talking about this for a while. people are are uh uh I get some emails about what are you doing to prevent the death and fatalities sit out on the streets etc. So maybe consider it if there's space. If we're limited in words, then obviously

yeah, it's a 75 word ballot, but we can look at it again and see if there's something. All right. Okay. Pole repairs. Um I certainly would be voting for this. And it seems that uh the the yeses are winning. It's almost what 68% yes. And uh I heard correctly that it's majority, simple majority. So I like it. please go ahead and work on it and we'll see you in May when you come back with the final uh package. Thank you and thank you mayor. Thank you council member Roach.

Thank you. [clears throat] Um let's see. Thank you everyone for the work that's gone into this. I wanted to ask about the polling and you know basically like what are best practices like what high number do you want to know that we can hit that majority number and and I mean I understand the the comment that um we're looking pretty good at was it 63% I guess when we get to the information 68 when we get to the information question um but given that you know I mean things are really hard right now and there's not necessarily going to be an appetite for continued taxes because everybody is hurting are we what is I mean is that sort of change at all right now or is this still the recommendation that 68 is looking pretty good?

Yeah, I'd say it's looking um very positive. Uh there's lots of room for people to potentially peel off or change their mind between now and no in November uh when the measures on the ballot. Um lots of clients are getting numbers in the 40s and the low 50s where they're not even sure that they're viable to place on the ballot. So I think you guys are are well positioned and I'm not too surprised to see that with a business license tax. Frankly, most voters are not going to pay that personally. And so, they just need to be reassured as we did in the um plain language information statement about, you know, this is a reform. It's going to protect small businesses, etc. Some of the some of the things that they might care the most about. And then just be informed about the oversight and audits and and other pieces um that we know voters care about, especially in times when they're feeling um that taxes might be um

Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. and and thank you for that comparison that if you're seeing other ballot measures pull it more of a 40% that that actually makes me feel better. Thank you for that comparison. Um and then on the feedback from the business community, I mean I totally understand why they don't want to see any increase in tax. I mean everybody's hurting right now so every little bit is really going to matter and there's a couple of categories that will go up significantly. Um but when when you were talking with them, was there any sort of nuance message sort of just acknowledging it's true that this hasn't been updated since 1978? Was there at least an understanding of that? I mean was or do you even did you even capture any nuance info like that? I don't know who can answer that but

yeah well when we asked if they felt that we should that that's where it got really mixed. So like they some agreed like a third agreed a third disagreed a third stayed neutral but we did go to the um government relations committee uh with the chamber and we didn't hear much about that. Um, Jen, do you Yeah, I was going to say we both presented to the DHIA board as well as the government relations committee for the chamber and what we heard was, you know, they never want to no one's going to come out and be like, we love to be taxed more, but I think people were generally supportive and kind of acknowled but acknowledge the need to modernize.

Okay. and that knowing the city's financial situation, I think there was kind of a general acceptance is what I'd say when we went to those um to the chamber and okay to the DHIA board. That's helpful. Thank you. That's I mean, you know, it's hard there and with inflation, other things, you know, it's going to I don't think any business is going to be glad to see this increase, but I think there was an acknowledgement, too, that we were really careful about restaurants. We were really careful about small businesses. I think they appreciated that as well.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, that's what I was sort of hoping that that was part of the conversation. Um, and you know, for that same reason, I I wanted to make a comment about the ballot language. I think the ballot question is fine, but because I I I mean, I haven't found the most compelling, you know, piece of all this was that it hadn't been updated since 1978 because when we recognized that we were going to be going into a pretty big deficit, I I felt really clearly like we can't tax everybody again. We just passed Measure K1. Um, and I I didn't want to do that again, but I was convinced because when we haven't modernized a text since 1978, I think that is an understandable um argument. I think the community can understand that. So, I would add that also on on the additional ballot language piece that, you know, right at the top, you know, that this is something that hasn't been updated since 1978. It is time to modernize and then all the other information. So, I think we have to keep reminding everyone that this is timely. Um, let's see. And I let's you know because I I so I am supportive of of updating this tax. I I think I think we we need to do it. I you know it sounds like it's the right time to do it. Um and I and I do you know so part of the caller's comments I mean everyone knows we're in this very difficult budget situation and so we're trying to make the best decisions we can. Um but everyone is going to hurt on this right everyone's going to have to give a little bit. So I don't think we can overreach in the business community to fix our deficit. But I do think it's timely for us to update this this text if we can if the if the voters agree. But but I I don't think we can make a potentially risky overreach. I think we have to find a way to do this proportionally reasonably. You know, Hayward is a little bit different than a lot of our our neighboring cities. Our economic, you know, demographics are are not as strong. And I don't think we can, you know, sort of tax the business, you know, um both, you know, like in a hard way and the actual money. um we we can't make them do all of it either, right? Everyone is we're all we're going to have to find our way through this in a

reasonable way. And so I am appreciative of the match neighbor um you know scenario here and I will support us going forward on this and looking further at the ballot language. So thank you everyone for your hard work. Thank you uh Mayor Prom Cyro.

Thank you mayor. Uh thank you for the report. I'm really encouraged by these results. I think when we were moving K1 forward two years ago, we saw a percentage around this amount and then, you know, I think the trust of voters in the city council really showed with the 83% approval, which was, I think, higher than anything we had pulled on. So, I'm feeling optimistic about this. Of course, I don't want to count our chickens before they hatch, but uh I also feel comfortable moving forward with this. I think as far as feedback and maybe some small revisions to review before we put the final draft on is um I understand uh uh Miss Wallace's concerns around, you know, when we say match neighbors, matching neighbors that also have outdated business license taxes that are uh also currently in the process of revisiting how to modernize theirs. And so rather than continuing to look at match neighbors in the 7X, maybe have a a new like maybe match neighbors version two, which is here are business license taxes in the Bay Area that have been updated in the last 10 years. And that way we could have a more realistic comparator of other modern business license taxes because I imagine more cities will likely be going in this direction as they face revenue challenges as well. And if we're going to do this once every 50 years, we might as well get it right so we don't have to constantly update it again. So, I think being able to understand, you know, um what a comparator to more modern business license tax looks like would be helpful for me feeling very confident in making that final decision when the final proposal comes uh before us in the future. And maybe the final decision for adoption is really, you know, option A or option B based off of that uh that feedback. And then um let me see uh as far as like specific categories go. I mean this is where I think you know Emily and Derek have an interesting overlap is for residential one to three units. The reason why there's no graduation is that if you only have three residential units that you're renting out, you're likely not bringing in over $5 million worth of revenue and sales. So there's not really a reason to graduate that specific category. So I just kind of wanted to clar clarify that for public knowledge. Uh in previous iterations, I think we we were looking at graduation and we've kept it flat just to make sure that the

burden on tenants was consistent uh across the board. However, if we wanted to see graduation, I think Emily had mentioned this. I can imagine commercial rental being a place we look at again. Uh uh and you I think we're set it's set at $3, but maybe we bump it up to, you know, three. I don't know what the previous iteration was, but we can look at graduating that upwards or we can keep it flat. I'm open to either of those options. Uh, in reality, I'm I'm not interested in graduating down because in reality, if you own three units at the at the and you're renting them out at the median rent of 2350 a month, you're raking in $84,000 a year off your three tenants and we're asking you to pay $252 estimate, right? Like that's pretty reasonable if you're running a business in the city of Hayward. Uh, when for the past 50 years you've been exempt from paying any taxes whatsoever. Uh, and the toll of smaller mom and pop landlords is usually a larger burden on our staff, time, and resources, our taxpayer dollars, uh, because oftentimes they're not equipped with professional staff. So, uh, I'm fine with where it is currently, and if we're going to graduate it in any any direction, I'm I'm happy to graduate it up, but it doesn't seem like there's much of an appetite for that. So, I'm not really here to die on that hill. Uh, but I just wanted to I think sometimes the argument around mom and pops can can get us to be overly sympathetic to the point where we're not actually thinking about the hard numbers and what that translates to. So, I'm I'm fine with where it's at. Um, if uh Suzanne has any suggestions on how we should rewrite our surveys in the future, I'm all ears. You have our email addresses. I encourage you to send me your iteration of the survey question. Um, are there other versions or other pieces of direction you're looking for from the council?

No, I think that's helpful.

Okay. And overall, I think that the language makes a lot of sense. I think because this is a more technical ballot measure uh even if we make some small adjustments to these numbers um we're in the ballpark currently and uh changing that amount I don't think is going to mess with the survey results that much I still feel confident if we make some small tweaks before we make that final vote. Uh and then also just for our our labor partners I I know that I have a meeting scheduled with um one of our city unions tomorrow to discuss this. Uh please be proactive in reaching out if you feel like you're not being heard from. You know how to reach us ahead of these council meetings. I'm always happy to uh happy to chat. Uh my interest in uh you know pushing a little bit on specific categories uh comparing ourselves to uh more modern cities is based off of your feedback both today and that I've heard in phone calls prior. So even if there's not a direct meeting and it sounds like we have tried to do some outreach, you still have access to us and we're also happy to relay those comments here too. So I just this if we move forward with this, this is at the urging of our labor unions and we're really going to depend on that partnership to move this across the finish line in November. So, um just uh want to express uh good faith in in working together to to make this as strong as possible, as effective as possible, uh and see it through. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh uh Council Member Bonia.

Thank you, Mayor. Um just wanted to also thank the staff for the hard work on this. It's clear that there's a lot of thought that went into this and also thank my council colleagues for the feedback that we provided to date. Um I think what's in front of us tonight is really reflective of all of that. So, just want to say thanks again. Um, I also agree that I think the headline here needs to be that this hasn't been updated since 1978 somehow. You know, maybe not in the actual ballot language itself, but maybe in some of the marketing material or how it is we talk about this. Um, when I think about a structure, a tax structure, any structure that hasn't been updated in that long, I think it's clear that it's time to modernize it to better reflect today's business environment and the economic realities that we're all living in. I do support the direction that we're heading in and I specifically support the approach of the matching neighbor scenario. I think it strikes a thoughtful balance between modernization, competitiveness, and fairness. You know, I appreciate, you know, the thought of should we look at other jurisdictions that have updated their business license and I think we should, but I don't think it should be limited there because if I'm going to open a business, I really don't care if St. Leandrew is doing something in five years. I kind of want to know what they're doing now. So, I do think that it's important to take that into consideration, but I really want to make sure that we're aligned with today's realities and, you know, kind of if we see that like St. Leander, I know they're going through the process right now. So, if we see that that's heading in a particular direction and it's likely, I think we should incorporate those type of, you know, assumptions into this. But otherwise, I think the way that this is written does strike a a very good approach. I also appreciate the approach of responsibly f finding a way of maximizing our revenue by identifying, you know, approximately $2 million in additional opportunities while staying aligned with council's prior direction. You know, I don't think we're going out here trying to, you know, do something that wasn't previously um asked for. I think that

this just shows the discipline that we're putting in place as we're looking at this tax measure to to make sure that we're doing the right thing for our businesses and for our broader community. Um, I think aligning with neighboring jurisdictions is important, especially when you consider the level of amenity services and community investment Hayward provides. I think it's reasonable that our structure reflects that value. I mean, we have a city and we always talk about, you know, our road in, you know, our road and our pavement index and how high that is compared to surrounding jurisdictions. We know that safety in the community is increasing. There's, you know, we have a local and we have a very responsive local government. So, I do think that, you know, businesses should pay their fair share for the services that they're that they're getting. And I think that this modernization aligns with that. But one area that I do, you know, just have some concerns about or I want to just better understand practically is the impact on small businesses and landlords. So, can you help sort of quantify what it means in real terms? Like what would it look like for a typical small business? What would this increase look like you know um on an annualized basis for them? And then when we talk about small landlords, particularly we heard about, you know, landlords that have one to three units. what would this impact look like just in a real dollars and cents, you know, perspective because I I think that that perspective is important for us.

I'll defer to Matt for that question. Yeah, I think some of that information is uh in the slide that we have where we compare to the neighbors. I don't know if it's possible to pull that up, but that might um help to answer this question a bit. I I just shared that calculation. I don't know if you heard me share those numbers.

I did. I just wanted to hear it and kind of just hear it from the perspective of this slide and also what the consultants had to say with that because I know that the numbers are I don't want to say relatively low, but that's sort of where I'm getting what I'm getting from this and also the slide. And I know that there's some mixed feedback that we've been getting from businesses and from some of the callers today, but I think putting these increases in perspective is pretty important. And then understanding the compounding impact it's going to have on our ability to maintain services is also the other book end that I think is important when we're looking at these rate increases.

Mayor, may I just jump in? I mean, because this was we did the same thing with the chamber was to give a couple examples and say them out loud. So, I think it's a great idea. Um, I think just to give a sense of a couple that I know will be sensitive, you know, one is small retailers that are trying to start their business and don't have a lot of grace gross receipts. So, as an example, let's say small retailer that has five employees has gross receipts of $1.5 million. They're currently paying $44 per year. And with this new tax measure, they'd be paying $450 per year. So, not a big increase for a restaurant that has 25 employees with gross receipts of 1.9 million. Right now, they pay 512 and they'd be paying 570 per year. So, not again, we try to be very sensitive to some of those retailers. Um, for the residential rental, we didn't do a small one, but just to give you a sense of the 50 unit um, rental that has 1.7 million in gross receipts, they're paying $566 now. So, this is a 50unit project. Um, they'd be paying 5,100 um, under the new tax. So, a bigger increase, but still 5,100 for $1.7 million and 50 units of housing. Um, so I just want to give you those a couple examples that I think stand out to me. Yeah, I think those are great examples and I I appreciate that because if you think about sort of the increases of everything else since 1978 and kind of what you just discussed here, it really does put things into perspective and I think it demonstrates the prudence that we're putting in place and the thoughtfulness as we're trying to balance what this measure looks like. And I think it's clear from feedback that we got from our business community that they're they have a range of perspectives on this proposal, which is understandable, but I think the context that you provided um is helpful. I think changes like this can be challenging, but it reinforces that we're striking the right balance as we look at this

modernization effort. I also appreciate, you know, that we heard from the Hayward voters and that we're taking a real balance view and hearing from all sides here. And I think the voters have signaled that it's also time to update our BLT. Um, and modernizing this structure positions us to better support and deliver services not only to our businesses, but to our community as well. So, I'm aligned with the gross receipt uh base structure and the progressive rate structure. Um, and I'm also aligned with the brackets as they were currently discussed tonight. At the end of the day, I think that this is about sustaining essential services in a responsible way. And this approach represents a fair and responsible path to do that. So, um, and I also think that it ensures that our businesses contribute in a way that aligns with the value of the services and infrastructure that supports them. So, I'm comfortable moving forward and I appreciate the thoughtfulness that's went into this. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Council Member Goldstein.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, staff, for uh the hard work that went into this great report. Um, I also want to thank labor for bringing the idea forward. I mean, it was really an an important thing for us to consider and I think that if we're not having the conversations with them, I I think we really ought to be and um the idea of matching our neighbors, good idea. Um but as uh Mayor Prom Cyrop suggested, uh matching modernized neighbors is pro probably the right way to go. Um, and and I think we probably by not doing that, we're probably leaving money on the table. Um, I am a little concerned about the potential impact of some of the other tax measures that may be making the ballot. Um, have we considered any of those other tax measures?

Yeah. I mean, I think we've talked about I don't know if Miranda, do you want to talk a little bit about that and then I can chime in too? Um, could you restate the question? Yeah. Impact of other tax measures that may be on the ballot.

Sure. Um, so that that was something we explored in part of the survey we just didn't share in this more concise uh slide deck. Um, I think even after that information, we still had pretty broad support. So um people typically consider um measures individually in terms of what they will pay for uh whether they trust the uh agency issuing the measure um and whether the kind of amount and mechanism is appropriate and here since this is something that again most voters are not going to pay themselves individually um I think that makes that choice a little easier for them. So they're not necessarily saying I'm only going to vote for one measure on the ballot today. They're going to consider each one individually.

Okay, great. Thank Thank you for that analysis. And uh it makes a whole lot of sense that people will be looking at this as something that the businesses pay even though in reality that means to some degree anyway some prices will increase. But I think most people accept and agree with uh we do need to continue to have great public safety and good roads. And it also benefits uh not only uh uh uh residents and visitors but also the businesses in the community. And I think for that reason the language and the marketing materials does need to highlight that this is the first modernization that's happened since 1978 and also talk about the mutual benefits to both the community and the businesses. And I think if we can uh squeeze the words in there or two that we are still businessfriendly. This doesn't, you know, take away from that. If anything, we're looking to continue to provide great services to the residents and businesses in our community and this is the way to do that. Uh okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Um I uh agree I uh generally agree with the sentiments up here and I wanted to thank everybody for their comments. I do want to just add one um uh one element to this. you know, uh, and I' I've said this before, even I, you know, even when, um, we talked about this back in February. Um, you know, we're we're raising a tax, uh, on businesses. And you know I uh I also want to be very mindful of um if we are going to go to the business community and ask them for an increase um I think we should uh be in a position and I think it's only right that we provide a clearly defined service or a clearly defined expectation uh to the business community. Um there are some things that the business community just consistently has come to us for. Uh um one being uh permitting process, right? Um the length of time, the you know um process and you know and so forth. So I I say that because what I would like for us to do and I know that we're not necessarily talking about programmatic things right now. Um, and I understand this is going to the general fund and I understand that this is going to pay for a lot of different things, but what I would like for us to do is figure out a defined um benefit to the business community that we can say that this tax is supporting to fund or to support new businesses either coming to Hayward or and or a defined benefit that businesses

small, medium, and/or large can take advantage of. Um because um you know I I uh you know I don't want to do this and and not have um you know and not do something directly in response and show a benefit to to the business, you know, to businesses. And so that that would be the only thing. And I know I know right now we're not talking about how we're going to spend the money and I know we're not talking about you know um those kinds of programmatic level things. Um but as we go down this road um I just uh I know I'll be thinking about that and I'm sure the rest of us will be thinking about that. But I just I I don't want to take that off the table. I want us to be able to um to provide something very tangible, concrete, uh to either new businesses or existing businesses in the city uh so that they see that they're benefiting from this. Uh and um I uh uh because personally, I mean, I I would not want to I would not want to pay a tax and know that I'm not directly benefiting from what it whatever it is that I'm paying for. And so um I am uh you know I am encouraged by um the survey data. I am encouraged by uh the support uh that I'm you know that we see. I'm encouraged by the support of the um you know of the ballot language and you know I think it it demonstrates that you know the city uh is seeing us uh delivering services. they are seeing us uh meeting those expectations at the neighborhood level. So, um so I appreciate that. Um I uh let's see. I don't want to repeat too much. I you know, I'm I'm still trying to, you know, I I understand what

uh council member or mayor promup was saying about um you know, the one to three unit uh landlords. Um, I I get it. Um, at the same time, you know, I I I um I want to see some more I want to see some more work on that and and um you know, I I can see that it might be minimal. Um but, you know, I'd like to see some more thought uh placed in that. How might we, you know, how might that look like if we were to carve out one to three? Uh, and if we do include it, what might that look like? Um, you know, uh, how much will it cost very specifically? What does that look like? Um I and I know Mayor uh Prom I I know you um uh mentioned some some of the numbers there, but I just I just want to see some some very uh formal presentation of that.

We can pull up it would be slide five if you want to talk about it. It's a um I think it would help if we get clear direction because we don't I think when we bring back the ordinance and everything we want to be we'll have to introduce an ordinance. Is that at that point? Is that right? Um so I just want to if if the council wants to decide now how they want to deal with okay bring it up.

Um if that's okay be slide five. So just yeah right there. And so you'll see the one to three generate about 464,000 under this current proposal. the tax rate is consistent for both the four plus and the one to three. So what the speaker was suggesting is that we graduate the one to three. So instead of starting at three, maybe you start at something lower for the um I think what I heard mayor prom say was was to maybe even start at three and actually go up further for the residential landlords. So we would need um some direction for how you want how the council come the majority of the council wants to proceed.

Okay. Because I because I don't think I heard a consensus up here on this and so I wanted to So So leave it. Uh uh let me Okay. Council member Roach. Thanks. Yeah. Um I know we did have a discussion about this I I think when we originally we saw it earlier but um but I I I I heard George's numbers. I just want to get that from you know maybe staff that that that's right. Is it really just that maybe like what will be the cost of one landlord you know in the year paying this? What's their additional going from zero right now to um

we could ask Matt if he could potentially we didn't it takes so like if you look at the next slide which is slide six they actually have to like run the numbers for individual scenarios and we just didn't run a small landlord one which um so I don't know Matt if you can run that give me a ballpark can we divide the sorry I was going to say can we divide the revenue expected by the number of people that would pay it should you get an average amount which is about $95 average. I the math is is relatively straightforward. If you think about if rent were $2,000 a month, then this would be $6 per month. Um that would be uh added to the to the rent bill or paid by the landlord,

right? Oh, I see. Because it's three if it's $3,000 a month, then it' be $9 a month. So that you can kind of figure out the arithmetic for whatever uh size uh unit you're talking about. Okay. Yeah, that that's what I thought because I remember I thanks for refreshing my memor because I know we had this discussion about it. So for that reason I'm happy leaving it the way it is. Thank you, the way it's proposed.

Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. So it seems like there's consensus there and then so we'll leave it there. Um and then you know so just to go back um so it seems like we're fine with the language. seems like uh we're fine with um the uh I guess the the the programmatic side of it is uh match cities, right? And um and the only thing I would add is as we move down this process and we start to you know define um programmatically uh I just want us to really think through how will business businesses benefit from this. That that's going to be the one thing I'll be looking for.

Great. And mayor just a couple other do you mind if I just what I heard also that any educational materials I think you really want us to emphasize that this was hasn't been updated since 1978. So, we'll make sure we emphasize that. Um, and then I think we've been talking uh about coming back in November after after we balance because we know that the balancing our budget for next fiscal year is going to be very tight. So, we come back in November after the election. So, we know what happened with this vote and I think that could be an opportunity for us to talk about with the added money from this business if it passes.

Yeah. Um, we know it's still going to be tight, but we may want to talk about restoring some services or things that have been super tight that we might want to address. Um, so we we could have that conversation about the benefit to businesses at that time if that if that makes sense. Okay. So, language emphasize 1978 and then come back in November with um programmatic details.

Yep. And I think also what I um I also heard is we'll bring back I don't think we would re I I agree with council member Bonia that I think even though there are other jurisdictions around us that have updated, we still compete with jurisdictions that haven't updated. So, I'm not sure I would recommend changing this, but I think we could bring the data back and so we could add a graph that shows where we stack up compared to jurisdictions that have modernized as additional information. I heard that comment as well. Okay, it seems like there's agreement on that. Okay. Okay. Well, that's uh that's good. All right. Well, thank you. Uh, do you have what you need? Okay.

Yeah. Sorry. Can I just ask, will there be any modification then? Cuz I guess my concern here is what was the value of the feedback tonight? If the feedback is really just bring this back so we can approve it because my concern is we're going to need labor to support us in passing this at some point. And if we're not being receptive for their feedback, that becomes a bit more difficult. So I I just want like are we going to see any kind of modification between now and when this comes forward again? Yeah, we are not propo we're we brought this in February. We invited all labor partners. I haven't heard any I mean we've invited them to come. I haven't heard any um concerns from labor partners. In fact, I've heard that they're some of them are, you know, prepared to support it and to try to support us and so or support the measure. But I I don't think we'll be making any changes at this point based on the feedback. But that was his opportunity was to provide that. But we tried to make a lot of changes based on the feedback we heard.

I understand I understand that we have to move this forward in one way, shape or form. I I would hope that we would I guess presenting some of the feedback you received between now and then at the end might be helpful and just being open to some minor modifications if necessary. Uh I I just don't want to preclude saying there's absolutely no room for feedback because we're in a very fluid situation right now. Yeah, absolutely. We I mean if someone comes to us with comments, we will bring those to you and and we can even if we're introducing an ordinance and we're doing it relatively early May and so we have a little time if you did want to make changes. We could you know we'd have to work that out with legal but we could potentially make some small changes at the DEIS and then we could always postpone it and come back again

if my colleagues are okay with that. I mean it needs to be consensus. I just don't want to close out labor from the discussion fully. We are always uh open for feedback for with our labor partners. Uh and then council member Andrews for transparency. Can we give a deadline for the labor parters partners to respond? Yeah. Just so they on this they're on the same page. Sure. I think what what it sounds like we're in that case if it if with your guys' direction we could send I think more explicit instructions that if they would like to send us feedback maybe with a um yeah we would need it probably within the next two weeks so that we could prepare for the May. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Council member Roach. I

I mean I appreciate the discussion but this was the chance to do the feedback. I mean, this was our work session and I think I think most of us were okay with the current match neighbors the way it is because there were comments I understand the comments that some cities will be modernizing but I think we've now had comments basically saying yeah but it's today's dollars that we're looking at. So I I mean I think there was a majority in council for us to say we're going to go with the current proposed match neighbors and there was an opportunity today. I mean, they knew that they actually were able to call in and talk about it. And so, I appreciate that feedback, but um I'm comfortable with the current match neighbors the way it is and the way it's proposed. And I'm not sure because if if we give them a deadline to come back later, don't we have to have another meeting to discuss said proposal? I mean, I think that's what I'm concerned about. So, we're trying to move forward with a ballot measure here and we don't have much time. So, I I think that the priority is to get it on the ballot in in the fall.

Yeah. I um also believe we've we provided them with the opportunity in February and we did invite them to that meeting and tonight. But I think if they provide feedback, we will use our judgment and we'll present we can provide that in your staff report and and then you can I mean at the end of the day you have to make a discretionary decision in May to approve this or not and we'll provide you with that information and then you can make an informed decision about whether or not you want to move forward or make a change at that meeting. Okay. Thanks,

Council Member Bono. Thank you, mayor. I just want to make sure that we're not going to spend too much time going in circles just to be honest with you. I think that there was an opportunity to weigh in on what was being discussed. I think we heard the comments. I think in a very respectful way we discussed those comments. We identified if there was an opportunity to incorporate them right now and there's not. So, I think that we owe it to staff to be clear and to say move forward with the direction that you've been given as it's been presented. um if there's something that's groundbreaking that comes through that needs to be considered then sure we'll be open to it but otherwise I do think that there's been ample opportunity and I think that it's time to move forward with you know with clear direction so thank you

yeah and I agree so okay great all right um with uh Mayor Pro Tim Cyrup

thanks I think there's probably majority consensus here so I'm just saying this to say I think um there are alternative I'm I'm curious is like I guess if through their feedback we are able to yield like an additional$1 or2 million in revenue for example I would be interested in hearing that or seeing that option if we if we introduce two ordinances simultaneously so that we can meet our legal deadline and say well if we support this one then we're just going to vote down this other one right like are there ways in which we could approach this that don't slow down the timeline that could yield more revenue I'm just open to that possibility but I'm in the minority here but I I think I just wanted to express like I think there are ways of working around this tight deadline without um slowing staff down, which I I respect the perspective of here. Uh but I just wanted to name that as a potential uh uh possibility, but I think it's it's been settled.

Okay. Thank you. Um Okay. Do you have what you need? Yes, we do. Thank you. Perfect. All righty. All right. Thank you. So, I will close item 13 and I will move on to item 14 and which is uh which is the it's another work session uh tree mitigation in loop fee and this is going to come to us from development services Sarah Bowser and I see Jeremy at the de so something really big is about to happen

sure good evening mayor and city council Happy to be here. Um I am going to turn it over to our landscape architect, Theo Spores, who will be leading our work session discussion tonight on the tree mitigation inlue fees. Um and get some thoughts from council on ways we can spend some of this money. So hopefully a positive discussion tonight. So I will turn it over to Theo.

Rookie. Thank you very much. I am Theos Forest as stated I'm a landscape architect in DSD planning department and um we are here to talk about the inluff fee um uh allocation [clears throat] potential and we'd like um like to talk to you about that and then get your feedback. Go to the first slide next. Okay, thank you. Um so the background for the inluff fee is that um in the 2025 tree preservation ordinance we up which we updated uh last year uh we formalized this ex really the existing inloo fee um for development projects. Uh the inloo fees are offered as a final option um after the replanting of trees on a development site or a new project are not possible. This is the sort of the last option for a developer or a builder. Um in this program we anticipate an annual potential annual um revenue from in fees of being about $250,000. That gives us a a significant positive potential increase in trees in the community. We broke these um potential allocations into three categories and so I'd like to go over those briefly. Um so based on feedback that we received during the development and the acceptance of the um what we call the TPO or tree preservation ordinance, we've been working toward a compre comprehensive approach um that allocates these fees into three specific or three

sort of broad categories if you will. The first category being the administrative and support and program management. Um so this is uh kind of broken down to a couple different ways. Um one is to meet you know the city of Hayward's climate goals to track evaluate and act based on the information that we gather and data. Um, the second one is to continue to serve the community with the commitments that we already have as a city to plant trees in city spaces and city- owned properties. Um, and to meet our our current service obligations to obtain um also to and to obtain cost recovery for any additional labor for new programs and projects etc.

[snorts]

The second category is a social equity and community partnerships. Um this was something that came up uh quite a bit from um planning commission and from the council as well. Um that part of our obligation and duty is to serve as many residents as possible. Um and we would like to see um a citizen tree grant program um developed so that those individuals that can't really afford to say main maintain a tree, prune their tree, etc. have an avenue to get some support uh for private property owners. Um we also would like to see the possibility of creating some tree planting programs. Um, and those are really most successful when they are community- based. Um, we'd like to team with some partners that experience in community outreach, education, tree care, and maintenance, um, which will allow for more successful long-term results in increasing our tree canopy, which has been something we talked about extensively in the, um, tree preservation ordinance. Oops, sorry. Skip slow skip skipping ahead on slides here. Um, the third category is environmental resiliency and sustainable planning. Um periodically [clears throat] we are going to need to redo our tree canopy study which um you may recall we looked at um a couple of times once it was uh created in 2023 and we looked at it extensively in the tree preservation ordinance and that really illustrated uh where we have canopy and where we don't. So we we it's the best way one of the best ways for us to target um and uh increase in canopy and evaluate where we

can improve and what strategies um we need to be successful in increasing our trans tree canopy. Another um great tool would be to create an urban forest master plan which is a comprehensive comprehensive road map which is designed to proactively manage expand and diversify the city street canopy. Uh the plan would ex uh expand [clears throat] benefits to the community you know through shade, air quality, climate resilience etc. And third, which is a a little bit of a turn on uh increasing canopy is defensible space planning. So we have um high severity fire zones in the city and this would enable us if when it comes up to create defensible space in areas where we might have um dangerous situations but still remain retain tree canopy in a defensible way. It's a little safer. So it might be removing invasive species or something like that or creating better better spatial relationships. So we we put together um this graph that shows some proposed program funding and again it's broken into those three sections that we just went over. Uh but in the first uh administrative support phase, you can see we've broken it down into these first three items are things that we already uh we already have in the city at some uh some form. So we have software, the planet geo software. We have a street tree planting program currently in the city of Hayward and we do maintenance of course on those those trees. And then um we would look at program

administration for the entirety of programs that are selected um as well. And those are broken down by an estimated dollar amount that we would see for an allocation and then what that percentage is of the uh total projects um those allocations. So, social equity, again, the grant assistance program, the nonprofit planting and outreach programs with uh uh community partners, and then um environmental resilience, sustainability, etc. that we just just went over. Um, if we were, you know, in a best case scenario, all those things were going to happen at once, um, and we had the money for it, it would, this particular layout would be $285,000. Of course, we're proposing a general hope [laughter] because we don't know how much money, if any, that we will get from season to season, yeartoyear, but a $250,000 uh average per per year. So that really gets us to the end of, you know, what we're proposing and how we're seeing um these allocations and how they might uh they might be um directed. And so we're requesting feedback um from the council on the proposed allocations for these inloo fees. And um so number one, does the council support SAS recommendation to fund program administration, planning, and programming at 15%. Number two, does the council support funding of community projects, partnerships, and programs as recommended by staff? And number three, are there any other programs s initiatives that the council would like staff to focus on? You know, there's again feedback and uh wanting to

do what's best specific community is what we're interested in.

So, do we have any questions? Um yes, we do. Let me see. Uh well, it is a work session. So, let me uh first go to public comment. Let's see. Um I don't have any public comment online. I don't see any uh I don't have any cards. So I will close public comment and I will come back uh to the deis and uh mayor pro Tim.

Thank you mayor. Uh thank you for this presentation. Very fitting for our uh Arbor Day proclamation that we had earlier. Uh, so good timing. Um, overall I'm supportive of this plan. I like seeing that we're creating a plan of what to do with these inloo fees. Uh, I'm hoping that I understand the assumption of $250,000 annually based off of what we're seeing now. But like you said, we're not sure if that's guaranteed. So my hope is that we are able to have this conversation on on a fairly regular or annual basis just so that we can prioritize what to do with the funds that we do have. uh whatever you know management costs are necessary just to keep the administration of these programs afloat as a baseline I'm supportive of keeping on an annual basis uh just to make sure that we don't lose sight of our tree planting goals and I see these funds as the way that we're uh e being able to actually execute on them and make good on our desire to be a tree city in the USA. Uh I love the tree city title. Uh we still have a lot of work to do though. when you go into the western parts of Hayward, it starts to feel like a desert and the u heat sinks that are created by the wide roads and the lack of tree coverage can really you really do feel the difference. Uh and so, you know, I think what I'm curious about too is um for the projects that are being put forward, how are we focusing on equity as it as it relates to uh tree and canopy development around the city? And that might fall under our tree master plan that we're developing. Um, but just wanted to have that communicated both to the council as well as to the community um when we embark on a tree planting project or initiative. Um, I know that 100K Trees Hayward has been uh a longtime advocate and I would imagine is the community partner you may have in mind. Could you speak a little bit to how that $75,000 fits into working with them, I'm assuming, or if at all? Yeah, it's well it's a little hard to say initially because it depends on the size of the project scale etc. Um and we would have to develop our uh our partnership and what we're going to

address. So um basically it's a big PR portion as well as the planting and maintenance of of trees. In the staff report it did do a I believe a breakdown of uh tree cost estimated tree cost planting and maintenance. Um, so we can go back and look at those numbers, but as I recall, it was around $465 per tree. Um, and so you can imagine that it gets uh it starts to eat up that $75,000 pretty pretty quickly.

But if we do a program with um with volunteers um or planting, we get a grassroots organization together, we can bring those costs down considerably. That's more the cost at the city level. Um, so that's one reason that the these programs um at the grassroots level are so important is we can get a lot we we get multiple things. We get a lot for our dollar basically and we get buy in that we can't we can't purchase um the buy in. We get physical people that are interested in planting trees and wanting to preserve them, make sure that they succeed.

Great. And then I think in the similar spirit of stretching our dollars when we're looking at what we want to prioritize around environmental resilience, you I think you mentioned like vegetation clearing as an example of mitigating fire. Uh rather than spreading ourselves thin and trying to have too many programs, I'd love to understand what you think is the best bang for buck program. Like you know we can cover this much ground with this kind of program for the lowest dollar cost. Do you already have a sense of what that might be or is that what the funding that you're trying to deploy now is setting out to do? Well, it's a little both. Um, because we want to also make sure that we're still meeting core services uh and the ability to uh maintain our commitments within this city properties. Um, but the grassroots programs, as long as we can get the long-term commitment to them, I think are the best um example. The difficulty is that um we need sites to do those uh those programs

um and we need to find we need to discover where those are where those are. Obviously we have our map we can look at and we physically can drive around Hayward but um we need sites um for those programs to take place. Some of those could possibly be within city property and right ofway. Um but that incorporates um you know that whole other level of um commitment from the community cutting concrete out of planter strips um you know another level of commitment and money as well. So, but I I really think that um based on talking with other groups, um Canopy, which is a a nonprofit in PaloAlto, East PaloAlto, um their programs are quite rich with um education programs and people growing into their into their organization and it's moved into other cities, but it's it's quite um layered and diverse and um it's a really good fabric of community that's involved um at all levels. And I think that's gives us the most resilience um for community and the most resilience, you know, with our with our tree canopy as well.

Great. Okay. Thanks for answering those questions. Um if my colleague, Council Member Zermena supports this and I'm supportive of it. Thanks, Council Member Andrews.

You know, I I planted a lot of trees around the city, too. I just want to remind people of that. So um thank you for the presentation. Um I think it's important to reduce heat island effect. So whatever we can do to u reduce that that would be great. Um I'm also interested in any programs that incentivize businesses to adopt more trees. So um they have a lot of the um footprint that needs to be covered including parking lots. So, I know that we have our requirements for our developments, but if we can encourage them to install more trees, maybe there's some incentives in their developments that we can look at. Um, so we I know that we have a checklist that we usually refer them to. So, if there's anything we can increase that, that would be great. Um, I also support programs that do not impact the general fund because even though this is covered by the ENLU fee, sometimes our programs causes more issues on our general fund. So if we can make sure that that doesn't happen, that'd be great. U so if we can properly manage those programs um including um the oversight of them in the inland fees, then I'm interested. Um I also agree with defensible space and making sure that we are looking at trees that are going to support the area and not attract more um ris risk and would be interested in making sure that we are working with partners such as um BOSA Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency to make sure that the trees that they're planting are not going to take up too much water as well. Um, and then also working with our clean and green commission to make sure that they're in the loop in terms of outreach. And I also would like us to consider strategic locations for tree planting and types of trees. Many people travel to Washington DC, Asian countries for the cherry

blossoms and um the northeast when it's the fall. So, if there's some locations that we can identify specific trees that u businesses can be incentivized to plant in a certain block or a row um just to invite more um visitors but also create placemaking. I think that'll be um something that we can look at as part of the program. Um I will also say that um I would be also interested in alternative names to master plan. It is an outdated term that we should not really be using anymore as it conotes subordination. So if we can consider comprehensive or other terms such as the tree canopy action plan, I would prefer to use that moving forward. Thanks.

Thank you, uh, Council Member Zmeno.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, uh, tree protectors and lovers like me. It's very important. Um I was really upset at the city of Hayward because uh two beautiful trees that I loved were killed. One on a street, another one in Sto. And one and that was because they caused accidents, but it's actually dummies who don't know how to drive that crashed into them. And there was and another beautiful oak tree was felt because um it was causing too much uh litter. Anyway, [clears throat] the mayor read to us today that in the first Arbor Day back in the 1800s, 1 million trees were planted in Nebraska. So, when are we going to do this?

If they if they were able to do it in 1895, can Hayward do it in 2026 or 2027? We will do our best to meet the goals and the objectives that council has as far as tree planting. I don't know that I can provide you a specific date as to when we will hit that 1 million tree number.

So, let's work on that. So, your three questions, yes, I support the plan 100% of one and number two. And on number three, there are three possible areas where we can maybe uh work on. Um, one is heritage tree identification. Uh, to ensure that a tree that has been identified as a heritage tree through a through something a ribbon or something uh can be protected. And then perhaps another one would be [cough and clears throat] um a tree count. I still do not know how many trees we have in Hayward. And then also third, can we identify areas in Hayward that would be liability free where we could plant fruit trees? I know the reason that Hayward does not plant fruit trees is because we are scared that a pedestrian will walk by under this uh apricot tree, slip and then sue us. So there must be there must be areas in Hayward where we can plant something that pedestrians not slip on uh accidentally. So those are three possible uh areas where we can spend some money. Um okay, tree canopy uh tree canopy means that the tree is fully grown. Correct. And it provides shade. That is what tree canopy means.

The tree canopy changes over time. Um okay. But yes, it is the it is the width of the the shade area of the tree. Right. And the best example of that is P Street right behind us. Correct. the where the can it's a very good example yes

it's the best example so we have a lot of other areas in the city of Hayward has been mentioned already that are dying for a tree they're dying for trees and uh that's one possibility grand avenue coming over here so what is the easiest way through this grant if it's possible uh to come up with some kind a program, let's say access Hayward, something similar where I can pinpoint a possible tree planting area and then you can look at it, you can go study it. I don't know if that's a possible use of the funds. Um, so that this way uh we can plant trees. I've I've already identified 20 different areas on Tennyson Road where we can plant a tree. I would love to be able to share that with with you or with someone because if we need more canopy then of course we need more trees. So that's the best way to do about it. Um

I would just say please send us the information that you have and we'll certainly take that under advisement as far as locations go. So, if you do have some specific identified locations, council member, I'd encourage you to send them, and we're happy to take a look at that and see if we can prioritize some of those locations, see how they line up with the um the the maps that we've already done that show where the canopy is deficient and so where we have alignment that might make sense and be an area that we could prioritize placement.

Very good. And the educational aspect to this is very important as we have one of the trucks that has a do, you know, free tree for your house. So, thank you for doing this. Um uh I will go out and hug a tree tomorrow just to honor this uh and uh keep planting trees. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor Council Bonia, may I respond to um a couple of questions you had or a couple comments

um of some things that are actually uh happening now uh addressing two a couple of your items, the heritage tree identification um and the tree count. those those um are happening by default with the new uh J planet geo software that um maintenance services is utilizing. They're recording trees in the city and um there's a map of those trees and types, size, etc. So, two of those things are already being addressed um which is quite encouraging.

And how will I know that this tree is a heritage tree? I can send you the tree preservation ordinance. We have um the qualifications to become a heritage tree and that's that's how a tree becomes a heritage tree is it meets the qualifications are set forth in the tree preservation ordinance. So um unless we're going to set up another program, right? It's just for you know it's just a typical uh Hwood resident can say oh look oh that's a tree okay that's a heritage tree that one is not etc. some way to identify them and I'm glad that you're working on it. Thank you very much, Council Member Bono.

Thank you. Um, I'll be brief in my comments because I generally agree with everything you heard from my colleagues. So, I do support the 15% program administration, planning, and programming fee. Um, as it relates to the projects, I do support those projects, um, the community projects, partnerships, and programs recommended by staff. But I do want to uplift what council member Cyberp said. I really do want to see these projects with an equity lens, right? Like I know we're intentional about where we're serving, but I also want us to be intentional about where we're not serving. Um, and are there other programs or initiatives that council would like us to focus on? Nope. I think that this is a good plan. So, thank you for the great work.

Thank you. Um, uh, just two things. One, I just want to, uh, oh, I didn't see uh, Um actually uh no I go ahead uh Council Member Roach and then Council Member Goldstein.

Okay, great. Thank you so much, Mayor. Um yeah, thank you. I know everyone said um a lot of things here, so and I'm supportive of this plan, so thank you. There was just a couple things I wanted to add. Um yes, I appreciate what you said about in the social equity inclusion programs that the point is to um you know, affect as many people as possible and we pos we can't possibly do that with the city staff. So, you know, distributing some of this, I think, out to the community is the way to go. And I mean, I would even, you know, we find ourselves not being able to get to the future canopy study or or, you know, the urban um force master plan, I um I I would encourage us to then use any I mean, I don't know. I know it's not a world where we have leftover money these days, but if we do because we couldn't get to some of that, I would put it back in the social equity programs because if we have these different agencies that we, you know, some of that were talked about tonight doing great work out there and we know they can get more trees in than we can in a given year, let's sort of default to that. Um, and then I also wanted to ask you, you know, you brought up the people with the cement um mo strips. Um, are we coordinate I know are we coordinating that when people come in to do home renovation? That's the moment I think right where it's going to be more affordable for them to to knock out that cement and put in a tree. Is there is there coordination between this program and um planning on that and can we do that that maybe it's just part of whatever they have to come into for permits that they get a little you know flyer or an update that says you know now's the time for a tree and can we do that?

Um it depends on the triggers for you know what's being developed. Yeah. and for a renovation. Um but there so there are opportunities to where they have to meet landscape plans etc. irrigation and planting and that's the time that we ask for those trees to go in. Yeah. I mean we certainly don't want to add this to be a resource problem but

yeah I'm just thinking it could be rather challenging. I mean if we have somebody coming in and they're doing a bathroom remodel it might be really hard to say oh and now I need you to remove the concrete out in front and plant a tree. So I think what you know Mr. Spores is referring to is when we have a project that comes in that has that does involve sort of that extensive work. They've got to do landscaping work. There's a better nexus and connection there and the the project probably is a little bigger. They can absorb the cost of probably doing some of that. It's a little hard if there's not they're not touching anything on the outside but but there's opportunities and we're happy to look at where there may be connections and we can great encourage. Yes.

Can I just say but I also it sounded like maybe you're talking about educating people too. Yeah, I think that's what I'm getting at like definitely not requiring it if you're doing a bath model, but hey, you're doing some upgrades. Don't forget you can put in a tree and now, you know, more of that line of thinking than making it any sort of city requirement, but you know, because it's in any of those scenarios, the most isn't necessarily going to be involved, but for them to know, hey, you're upgrading, you know, you're painting, you're making it look good. It'll look good if you get put a tree in your MO strip. So, yeah, that's all I'm getting. Thank you. Um, you know, I hate to say it, I'm one of them because I we when we bought our house, somebody had cemented in the most or if we, you know, I want to do it, we just haven't done it yet. So, don't write me out everyone. Um, okay. And so, so wait, that where are my other comments here? And, um, on the defensible space, are so is that are we working with fire? Do we work with the fire department on that? Okay. Yes. Because I know they're doing that good work and getting other grants right I think in that area. So, good. If we can coordinate these efforts, that would be great. Um, and then I mean the final thing is just a more education. You know, I think people have this idea because I I heard this when I was out campaigning the first time that trees are messy. They create liability for the sidewalk, your sidewalk liability. Um, and that it's it's just sort of difficult to maintain. And and I think, you know, just the education of people understanding that trees and cities actually make our property values, you know, go up. And um, you know, people covet cities that have canopies along their streets. And I don't know how we educate that. I mean, it's also a value, you know, it's sort of different aesthetic values, but yeah, I mean, to George's point, we have some areas of the city where they're just bald, right? It is hot out there. And um and I think if they understood what that would do to their property values, I you know, it's just more education on this. So, otherwise, thank you so much for the update.

Council Goldstein. Yeah, thank thank you for [clears throat] the report. Uh I also am in favor of uh of this uh plan. uh 15% I think is pretty reasonable. I I would as uh my colleagues have suggested try to apply uh building out the canopy uh in uh areas that are currently neglected. Uh Tennyson Road kind of comes to mind. There are sections of that that are just all concrete. And if you ever try walking out there, I think you know how hot it is even just on a somewhat warm day. [clears throat]

So, uh, I'm in favor of that. I think also educating our residents about the value of tree canopies. I know we did that in the past a couple of times, I seem to recall. Uh, do we still have a tree giveaway program? We we do still. Yes. Maintenance services has a tree giveaway program. Um, I think it runs it's a grant and it runs through 2027.

Nice. Okay. And so I I seem to recall at one point we were uh sending out some material and uh email announcements and others that were uh not only promoting that but also promoting why to do it. Why plant a tree? And I would like to see us do that. Uh as long as it doesn't come out of general fund. Um sorry I'm not trying to be glib but I I really mean it. But the uh I think that's I think that'll all I have for now. Thank you.

Thank you. Um I agree generally with everything up here. Um I just the one thing I did want to put uh or sort of shed light on is uh I get a lot of calls or and emails around tree trimming. Um, you know, that seems to be a a high ticket item for a lot of homeowners. Um, and you know, just if we can just pay some attention to how we fund that bucket. Um, it'd be nice if people call us. Um, you know, there are neighborhoods, I'm and I'm sure you've seen them. You know, there's homes out there that have these huge trees that cost thousands of dollars to trim. and um you know and the the homeowner or you know whoever just simply cannot afford to to to trim it. So if we can just sort of be mindful of that, that would be nice. Um and then I just wanted to I uh I kind of liked Council Member Andrews's suggestion about uh uh naming the plan, you know, a tree conservation action plan. I think that's great. Uh you know, kind of changes the the orientation around um uh around trees. But yes, I think uh all the other comments I agree with and um you know uh we certainly need more trees out there. No doubt. Miss Bowser, do you have what you need?

I think so. We appreciate the feedback. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

And with that, I will move on to the next item. Uh the next item will be um it is a legislative business item and it is um hold on. Oops. It is uh item number 15 LB26-00006. It's the fiscal year 2026 salary plan amendment. adopt a resolution approving uh an amendment of the city of Hayward salary plan for fiscal year 26. And this report will come to us by way of uh human resources director um taxon. Um I uh it's a short report. Uh uh how do uh how long's your report?

It's up to you if you want to report or not. Yeah, why don't we do this? Why don't we forego a staff report and just go straight to questions and see if uh there are any questions uh up here the day. So, Mr. Tone, thank you. I will uh it is a legislative item, so I'll see if there's any questions from council first. Uh council member Cyro, thank you. Um could you just speak to because of sensitivity around costs the city, can you speak to where these costs are coming from just for public information?

Absolutely. These costs are coming out of enterprise funds. So you'll see on the slide here um they're coming mostly from the water enterprise fund and then one of them is a combination of the water enterprise fund, storm water fund and sewer fund. Great. And then for the public's knowledge, our enterprise funds operate like businesses. So they're required to generate revenue to sustain their own operations. This is not coming from the general fund. Correct. Correct. Correct. Okay. Yes. Great. Okay. Thank you for clarifying. And then the compaction or the built-in raises here are baked into theou or labor contracts that have been negotiated in the past. Correct. That is accurate.

Okay. Thank you. Uh, thank you. Um, I don't have any other questions. I will move on to public comment. I do not have public comment, so I will close public comment and I'll entertain a motion. Oops. Hold on. Uh, move. Okay, I saw it. Um moved by I don't have it I don't have a mo a motioner or a seconder. Uh moved by council member Goldstein, seconded by council member Andrews. Um madame city clerk, can we take a role? And it looks like item will unanimously pass. Okay. Um, moving on to council reports and announcements. Uh, Mayor Pro Tim Cyro.

I appreciate Council Member Andrews tree planting efforts. I I didn't request to speak, but I just wanted to acknowledge that.

Okay. Uh, okay. Uh we're all celebrating um Council Member Andrews's tree planting work. Um there are no uh council reports or announcements. Uh I will move on to uh council referrals. There are no council referrals. Ladies and gentlemen, our next meeting will be April 21st, 2026. Meeting adjourned. record. I can't feel any